The SIM card tray you see pictured up top is supposedly designed for the Apple Tablet, and is built by Foxconn (the device’s rumoured manufacturer). It’s definitely larger than the current iPhone SIM tray, but it could probably also be used anywhere. Either way, it goes on sale October 23 for $US14.05. [China On Trade via Engadget]

Also of note, is that Foxconn has its own Innolux Display subsidiary which might be used instead of Wintek.

But seriously, these are all rumours, so take the latest with the copious measure of skepticism they deserve. Especially when DigiTimes’ batting average on Apple info is pretty craptastic — even when it comes to Taiwanese-based manufacturers in its own backyard. [DigiTimes]

I say that because ARM-based processors like Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor don’t support Windows, and here’s Nokia with its own Linux-based OS. That said, we’ve also heard plenty of rumours (since denied) about Nokia looking at Android. We’ll have to wait and see. [DigiTimes]

The family now gets $US52,600 (up from $US44,000) as well as $US4,385 every year as long as one of the parents are alive. The Foxconn official that leaked this information to the press spoke anonymously since he wasn’t a qualified press-relations employee. [Yahoo]

AppleInsider says that Dow Jones carried the report as well, though it comes from a paper less well-known than say, DigiTimes. The September or October launch date Apple Daily reports is slightly more aggressive and definite in its time table than the Financial Times report that came out this weekend, which simply said that Apple “racing to offer a portable, full-featured, tablet-sized computer in time for the Christmas shopping season.”

A morbid thought, but if Foxconn is building the tablet, what if the tablet was the prototype Sun Danyong lost before he was driven to suicide? They wouldn’t say he lost the mythical Apple tablet, after all.

AppleInsider still thinks it’s coming in 2010, for what it’s worth. We still think never trust rumours. [AppleInsider]

More recently, Sun Danyong’s alleged iPhone suicide has outed the company’s brutal practices.

Now, one employee appears to have written an account of what it’s like to be recruited and work for Foxconn (in perpetual overtime, for a grand total of about $US220 a month) that was published on China labour Watch. Needless to say, the experience more closely echoes an internment camp than a dull production line:

I was placed in a dormitory that has ten three-level bunk beds, thus accommodating 30 people. While many people refused to stay there at that time, the management said that it is much better than the other dormitories on site that are shared by hundreds of workers…The training begins immediately on the second day upon our arrival. At first I thought we would be informed of some professional operative skills and knowledge, but instead, we were taught the factory’s regulations, culture, and acknowledgment of Foxconn’s business concept. By now, I think it is safe to say that the training is a part of Foxconn’s brain washing process. A supervisor told us that working at Foxconn requires total obedience; you do not need to be intelligent or highly skilled. After a week of training, we concluded that at Foxconn, we shouldn’t treat ourselves as human beings, we are just machines. During the week, we also had a health examination, a very simple blood test, a blood pressure test and a vision test. We did not receive any results afterwards.

To read more on a business culture that will go so far as to fine its employees for uneaten rice in the cafeteria, hit the link. [China labour Watch via Silicon Alley Insider]

Sun apparently was given not just one, but 16 prototype iPhones on July 9 or 10 to deliver to R&D, and he reported one missing three days later. Foxconn’s China general manager James Lee told the NYT that Sun had a history of disappearing products: “Several times he had some products missing, then he got them back,” and that they “don’t know who took the product, but it was at his stop.”

The NYT closes with an episode that again shows the kind of people Sun had to deal with: Not long after Sun’s father finished telling journalists Foxconn treated the family well, a security guard with two men in Foxconn shirts appeared and threatened to beat up a journalist’s translator if they kept asking the family questions. Foxconn swears the guard wasn’t one of their guys.

I’m sure he had nothing to do with Foxconn, and just some dude who asked to tag along with the guys in Foxconn shirts for fun. [NYT]

Maybe some competing company or manufacturer hired someone to lift it. Maybe some kid picked it up off the curb and it’s in his toy chest. Maybe it’s under someone’s couch cushions. Maybe it’s lying in the middle of a street, being run over by hundreds of cars an hour, completely unrecognisable. Maybe someone reading this post has it in their hands. Maybe it never existed.

Where do you think the missing prototype is?

“My dear, I’m sorry, go back home tomorrow, something has happened to me, please don’t tell my family, don’t contact me, this is the first time that I have ever begged you, please agree to that! I am so sorry!”

If Foxconn is directly involved in his death, it and all of its executives could go bankrupt a million times over and that would still not even come to close to justice for Sun Danyong. [The New Yorker]

The latter report is the more interesting of the two, for the glimpse it gives into Foxconn’s corporate culture: When Foxconn security manager Gu Qinming interviewed Sun, he says that Sun initially blamed the missing phone on a female colleague, provoking Gu to poke him in the shoulder and ask, “Are you a man?”

According to Gu, it was Sun who suggested that Foxconn search his house, to prove his innocence. Which almost sounds reasonable, insofar as Gu thought Sun was both incompetent and a liar—what else could Sun have done?

Granted, this is coming from the guy who interrogated and may have tortured Sun Danyong before his death and works for a company so secretive it might have driven a man to suicide over a phone. [The New Yorker]